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Sunday, August 6, 2006

First Grade ~ Day 1

Today was the kiddos first day of school.  All went well, and they seem to be excited about 1st grade.  I just hope that I can keep it fun for them, so there will be no tears -- from any of us.


 


We are on no time schedule around here, we just start when we get ready to and work until we are finished.  That seemed to work ok today, and shouldn't be a problem any other day, just some days will go a bit longer or shorter depending on what we plan to accomplish and what we really do accomplish.


 


Here is what our day looked like:


 


Ry got up at the crack of dawn as usual, and woke me up saying he was hungry.  I got up and told him to do his chores for the day  - which was unloading the dishwasher.  While he was doing that, Sis woke up and started her chores - carrying the laundry down and sorting it.  After they were finished with their chores, I fixed breakfast - yep, went all out and made them a bowl of cereal... While they were eating, I read to them out of Blessings Everyday - a Devotional for Young Children (I think I will switch this to bed time and do Bibile Beginnings while they eat breakfast). Once they cleaned up their breakfast mess, we did their first phonics lesson.  We are using Alphabet Island. Lesson 1 was just an introduction to the program and a couple of writing work sheets. They also listened to a song from the Alphabet Island CD.  Then, we pulled out the math workbooks. We are using MathUSee ~Alpha level. They completed Lesson 1, page A&B and we played a quick game with some numbers, the manipulatives and Decimal Street.  Science was fun, for me and them...we are using Exploring Creation using Botany.  I read them the first few pages (1-7) and we stopped and talked about several things throughout the reading.  We learned a few new words: botany, biology, biologist, botanist, taxonomy and classification.  They made their cover page for their science notebook, did the questions from What Do You Remember, and told me what all they had learned today.  I typed up the questions and wrote in their answers, and I also typed up what they had learned and they colored a botany related picture on it - both of these also for their notebooks. We did 2 hands on projects with our science today. Both are suggested in the Botany book.  (1) We sorted our legos.  In relation to how a botanist sorts out plants (Kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, species - we touched on that a bit,and I thinked they understood the refernce as to why we were doing it - we talked about the 2 bumps are red flowers and the 1 bumps are pick flowers) We started out sorting the red, yellow, blue and green from the other colors ((I am sure most of you know why I chose only 4 colors -- we would have been there for days had I not narrowed it down a bit!!)) from there, we sorted into further into colors (we have some that are reddish clear) then, we broke down even further - 1 bump, 2 bumps, 4 bumps, etc.  Then, all those bumps even went further -- some of them had ramps, which were in a classification all by theirselves. We had fun with that activity.  (2) We also did the shoe activity that was suggested (should have done the shoes first - the legos broke down much more than the shoes did) but-- we collected one of each shoe in the house then sorted them into different classes - dress, water, running, inside...they had a lot of fun with that also -- very hands on!!


 


We took a break and had some lunch and what should have been quiet time in their room -a movie - and I am paying for it now, as they are in the other room arguing!


 


After they movie, they both wanted to do some more work.  I pulled out First Language Lessons and did Lesson 1.  We discussed what a noun was.  I had them point out some nouns (hehe...they weren't fooled for too long -- they pointed out a few things, then they figured out that everything they could point to was a noun).  We did our Bible Beginning (I am moving it up to during breakfast!) and then one of our extras for the week - Health.  We started discussing the Food Pyramid.  They listened to a book that I have on the food pyramid, talked about the poster I have, and colored their own.  I made a blank one and we put it on the wall. We are going to spend time on each level and fill in the blanks with pictures of food that they find.  They both chose a story from the Story Basket (I have checked out books that I want to read to them, and also books that go along with our lessons.  The books that I want to read to them start off there, and the ones that are go-alongs, will go there after I read them for the first time with the lesson) and then we were finished.  Ry went to load the dishwasher and Sis is supposed to be folding the towles that she know how to fold.  We are about to go to mom's for dinner!!


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Please keep me in your prayers Monday as I have an appointment with a specialist about my lungs and my breathing difficulties.


 


~christa~

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on a very successful first day! It makes me excited to get ours started again... I'm praying for you tomorrow, please keep me posted as to what you find out.

    ~Amy

    ReplyDelete
  2. And congrats on a good first day! I'm about to let go of our "schedule" too, we tend to get it done anyway.


    Make sure you update on how your appt. went!

    Jessica

    ReplyDelete

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